At 08:44 PM 7/2/96 -0700, Martin Minow wrote:
It's not quite that bad. Here are a few (more or less strong) crypto products you might not know you have:
1. Every Macintosh made since at least 1988 has a secure authentication client module in the AppleShare Chooser dialog. When you use it to connect to a remote server, it notes that the user information is "two-way scrambled." (The server sends a random number challenge that the client uses to encrypt the username and password. The encrypted information is sent to the server.) All Macintosh systems running System 7 or later have the corresponding server software. What is interesting about this is that the encryption is completely invisible to the user.
I hear this as the server sends out a key which the client uses to encrypt the username/password. This algorithm makes less sense than the one I thought I heard at the SAFE forum on Monday which was: (1) The server sends out a challenge/salt (different each time) (2) The client uses a secure hash to compute hash(salt||password) and returns the username and the hash. (3) The server computes hash(salt||password) and compares the hashes. Given that there is still some interest in algorithms and protocols on this list, can you describe what is really happening? Thanks - Bill ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | The Internet may fairly be | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | regarded as a never-ending | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz@netcom.com | worldwide conversation. | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA